


Donning the cape

by richmahogany



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Gen, School
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-08
Updated: 2015-06-08
Packaged: 2018-04-03 11:18:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4099096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/richmahogany/pseuds/richmahogany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>School for Harold turns out to be a boring, bewildering and sometimes dangerous place. Things are looking up when he discovers a treasure trove hidden away in the school and makes friends with its guardian. And then Harold decides to become a superhero.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Donning the cape

**Author's Note:**

> Harold in first grade. Just because I thought it would be cute. Disclaimer 1: I did not grow up in the US and didn't go to school there, so if I've made a hash of the American education system, my apologies. Disclaimer 2: I have no ready access to any 6 year olds for observation, and it's been a long time since I was that age, so if there's anything that's sounds uncharacteristic of kids that age - can I say "poetic license"?

Harold stood at the side of the road, peering into the distance. Behind him the dirt track snaked past a meadow on one side and a wheat field on the other, up to his parents’ house. With the start of school summer was officially over, but the day was already unusually hot. Harold’s mother had dressed him in a long-sleeved shirt and long pants this morning, and he was starting to sweat. She had also flattened his hair with copious amounts of water, but it was already drying in the heat, and its natural spikiness was reasserting itself.

Harold was feeling nervous and a bit worried. This was to be his first day at school, and he was waiting for the school bus to pick him up. But what if the bus didn’t know that he was waiting? After all, it had never come this way before. Had they told the school that he was attending from today? And if a bus came, how would he know it was the right one?

Harold let his gaze follow the road. In the distance, everything became a bit blurry, and he squinted to make things clearer.  Which direction would the bus come from anyway, the left or the right? When he and his parents drove into town, they went right, so he assumed that the bus would go in the same direction. He sighed. His first schoolday hadn’t even started yet, and already there were so many things to be worried about.

Eventually the bus appeared. Its door opened, and Harold climbed in. The bus driver smiled at him. “Hello,” he said, “I’m Joe. What’s your name?”

“Harold,” said Harold.

“Welcome to school, Harold.”

There were a few other children on the bus already, who were all looking at him now. Harold quickly sat down on the nearest seat and turned to look out of the window. That was the bus problem solved, anyway. Now he could start to worry about the school itself.

The first grade teacher was a tall woman who looked rather stern in a long, dark dress, with her gray hair pulled back into a bun. But she smiled as she waited for the children to settle down at their desks.

“Today is your first day at school, so we will just get to know each other,” she said. “My name is Miss Mason, and I’m going to be your teacher this year. I would like to know who you are as well. So let’s go round the room, and you tell me your names. I will put signs with your names on your desks, that will help me to learn them more quickly. Let’s start with you,” she said, looking at a girl in the front row. One by one the children said their names, where they lived and what their parents did. After that they practised standing up and chanting “Good morning, Miss Mason,” to which she replied “Good morning, boys and girls”. This was to be their greeting every morning, because, Miss Mason explained, “it is important to treat each other with politeness and respect.”

There were no lessons on that first day, but Miss Mason handed out a sheet a paper to everyone and asked them to draw a picture of their house. Harold liked drawing, and he applied himself to his task with great concentration, although he spent less effort on the house than on a detailed depiction of the tractor that was parked in front of it.

Next Miss Mason handed out the books which they would be using from tomorrow. And that was the end of Harold’s first day at school. The other kids either walked home or were picked up by their mothers. It seemed that most kids’ mothers had arrived with them in the morning and had waited for them to finish, but Harold’s mother obviously hadn’t known that she was supposed to come as well. Harold hadn’t known either, so now he had to wait for the school bus to leave. He went outside and sat on the pavement next to a large concrete planter. He took out the books Miss Mason had handed out and looked at them. There were a math book, a speller and a book called “Fun with Dick and Jane”. Harold opened that book and read it all the way through, but it was a disappointment. Far from being fun, Dick and Jane and their family  were possibly the most boring people in the world, who also had a strange obsession with saying everything three times. Harold next opened the math book to see what he was going to learn there. Counting from one to ten, it appeared. There were little pictures of things like apples, milk bottles and coins, and you were supposed to count them and write the number underneath. That wasn’t very interesting, so Harold turned over a few pages. But the book just repeated itself, only now with the numbers eleven to twenty. Harold sighed and closed the book again. He liked numbers, and he had quite a few questions about them, but it looked like he wouldn’t get answers from this book. He was starting to wonder if he was going to learn anything interesting at all. But this was only the first day. He would have to wait and see.

When Harold got home, his mother was in the kitchen. “How was school?” she asked.

“Fine,” said Harold. “Our teacher is called Miss Mason.”

“Do you have any homework?”

“No, they don’t give any on the first day. I made a picture of our house,” he said, putting the paper onto the kitchen table.

“That’s nice, darling,” said his mother distractedly, looking at it with one eye while keeping the other on her cookbook. Harold was used to not getting much attention from his parents, so he didn’t mind.

“Can I go outside?” he asked.

“Yes, but don’t go too far. We’ll have dinner soon,” his mother reminded him.

Harold went to the barn to watch the purple martins. His father had attached a special little house for them below the roof, where they had been nesting during the summer. Their young had long since fledged, but the birds were still around. They wouldn’t migrate south until later in the fall. Harold sat down and watched the martins flit back and forth in pursuit of insects until his mother called him in.

***

The next day was Harold’s first proper school day, and already his troubles started. Miss Mason began with teaching them the letters of the alphabet. For this purpose she had a set of cards, each printed with a letter, a word and a little picture. Several of the children already knew their letters and could even write their names, but others didn’t, so Miss Mason started from the beginning. Harold had known the alphabet since he was three, so after a few moments he stopped listening and thought about other things instead.

At the end of this morning’s lessons the boy sitting in front of Harold turned round to him. He was a big boy, who had supposedly failed first grade last year and had to repeat it.

“What’s your name again?” asked the boy.

“Harold,” said Harold.

“Harold! That’s a stupid name, Harold,” the boy sneered.

“No, it’s not,” answered Harold, rather startled by this sudden attack.

“Yes it is! Harold, haha! Can’t you hear how stupid that sounds, _Harold_?”

“Well, stop saying it then,” said Harold.

“I don’t want any stupid people sitting so close to me,” said the boy and began to push Harold’s desk backwards. Harold tried to stop it, but the other boy was much stronger. The legs squeaked on the floor as the desk slid along, but then Miss Mason called: “Stop that! Everybody out! It’s time to eat your lunch.”

The boy gave Harold another contemptuous look, then they left the classroom with everyone else.

Their next lesson was math, and it was just as boring as Harold had feared from looking at the book. Miss Mason started by teaching them the numbers from one to five, and they spent a lot of time counting things in pictures and drawing pictures themselves of numbers of things. Harold could count not only to five, or ten, or even twenty, he could count as far as he wanted, because he knew how counting worked. Once you knew how to count to twenty, it was easy to figure out how to go on from that. When you arrived at ninety-nine, you started on the hundreds, which worked in exactly the same way, except with one-hundred or two-hundred or whatever in front. And when you had finished the hundreds, you started on the thousands, which again worked in the same way. So to spend so much time on those few numbers was really not interesting at all. What Harold really wanted to know was if you could keep counting that way forever, or if at some point you ran out of numbers. Or maybe you just ran out of words for the numbers. He knew million and billion, but he didn’t know what came after that. Maybe the numbers went on and on, even if there were no more words for them. Those were the questions that occupied Harold’s mind when he thought about numbers, but it was clear that he wouldn’t get any answers here. At least the drawing was a bit of fun.

And with that the pattern of Harold’s schooldays had established itself. The lessons were mostly spent not listening to the teacher. He looked out of the window lost in his own thoughts, or did a few of the calculations at the back of the math book, or drew something which had nothing to do with what Miss Mason was talking about. He ate his lunch sitting by himself. Afterwards he went outside and again sat on the sidelines watching the other kids play. A few times one or another of them had tried to talk to him, but since he hadn’t known what to say, they soon gave up again and left him alone. Many of the other kids knew each other already because they had attended kindergarten together the year before. Harold hadn’t gone to kindergarten, so he didn’t know anyone. He didn’t know any of the games they were playing either. There had never been anyone to play with for him. At home he was alone, and although he had a few cousins, he saw them rarely, and they were either much older or much younger anyway. Harold didn’t know how to join in with the other kids, and they didn’t ask him. Once only he had been invited by a group of boys to join in with their ballgame, but he had been swiftly excluded again when it became obvious that Harold sucked at both throwing and catching the ball. It was a shame, since baseball was one game of which Harold actually knew the rules.

His habit of not paying attention got Harold into trouble after a few days. It was during a spelling lesson, and as soon as Miss Mason got out her cards, Harold had switched off and looked out of the window, where a pair of cardinals was playfully hopping between the branches of a tree. Suddenly he became aware that his name had been called. He looked towards the front, where Miss Mason stood holding up one of her cards. Something was expected of him. But what?

“Come on, Harold,” Miss Mason said, “can you read this letter?”

Harold looked at the card.

“A,” he said.

“Yes, and A is for…?”

Harold didn’t know what to say. “A” was obviously for forming words with “A”, but that was probably not the answer. No, he was probably meant to give an example of a word with “A”.

“Axolotl,” he said.

“No, Harold, you are not supposed to make something up,” chided Miss Mason.

“I’m not making it up,” Harold defended himself, “an axolotl is…”

“That’s enough, Harold,” Miss Mason interrupted him. “Do you know the answer or not?”

She waved the card at him. Besides the letter A it showed a word and a small green blob. Harold squinted at the card. The blob resolved into an…

“Apple,” said Harold.

“There you go!” said Miss Mason, and thankfully turned her attention to the next kid.

***

When the whole class had finally learned all the letters, they moved on to “Fun with Dick and Jane”. Before long, however, Harold was in trouble again. Miss Mason had set them the task of reading page 3 in the book. She would give them some quiet time to figure the words out, and then she would ask them to read aloud. While everyone sat with their heads bent over their books, Miss Mason walked from desk to desk to see how they were getting on. Harold was bored. He idly turned the pages until he was at the back of the book. Unfortunately that was the moment Miss Mason arrived at his desk.

“That is not the page you are supposed to read,” she said quietly. “You are supposed to read page 3. Don’t you know which page that is?” She wasn’t even telling him off, Harold realized, she really thought that he might be unable to recognize the page number.

“I’ve already read page 3,” he told Miss Mason.

“Well, if you are so quick, why don’t you have a go at page 4 then?”

“I’ve already read the whole book,” Harold told her.

“You mean you’ve looked at all the pictures.”

“No, I’ve read the whole book,” Harold repeated.

Miss Mason frowned at him.

“Now, Harold, you mustn’t lie,” she told him sternly.

Harold was about to defend himself when he remembered the axolotl. It seemed that knowing things didn’t do you any good at school if you weren’t expected to know them. He remained silent and turned back to page 3.

“Well,” said Miss Mason, “if you think you can read this, you can be the first to read aloud.”

“Yes, Miss Mason,” said Harold.

***

For a few days afterwards Harold managed to stay out of trouble, at least in the classroom. During recess, however, things took a turn for the worse. Some of the other boys had begun to pick on Harold, for no reason that he could figure out. It started with some of them taking their cue from Burt, the boy who had called Harold’s name stupid. They called him a variety of other names, and laughed when he tried to defend himself. Harold tried to argue that he hadn’t done anything to them, and if they didn’t like him, why didn’t they just stay away from him? They didn’t argue back, instead they resorted to pushing him whenever he crossed their path, holding him down and pinching his arms, and tripping him up in the corridors. Once, just has he was about to eat the cupcake he had brought in his lunchbag, Burt walked up to him and demanded the cake for himself. There was nothing Harold could do. He was smaller and weaker and would stand no chance in a fight. He gave up his cake, but he was sad and angry about it. His mother’s cupcakes were delicious, and he had particularly looked forward to this one because he had helped his mother with the baking.

Harold tried to hide from his tormentors as best he could, but he wasn’t very successful. He couldn’t tell anyone what was happening either. He was ashamed that he couldn’t defend himself better, but there was nothing he could do to make them stop. Arguing had gotten him nowhere. When he shouted back at them, they just laughed. When he remained silent, they laughed too. Once he had actually tried to hit back. That resulted in him being held down and given a good kicking. The bruises didn’t fade for over a week.

***

When Miss Mason handed Harold a letter with the instruction to give it to his parents, he didn’t think anything of it. His mother, however, was not pleased by what she read.

“Miss Mason says that you haven’t been doing your homework, Harold,” she said. “Is that true?”

“Well, yes, kind of, but…”

“I thought you were doing well at school. Why are you not doing your homework?”

“There’s no point! Like, today, we are supposed to practise writing ‘dog’ and ‘cat’. I know how to write ‘dog’ and ‘cat’! Why do I need to practise? What’s the point?”

“The point, Harold,” his mother told him, “is that you do what your teacher asks you to do. Please do your homework in the future. I don’t want to receive another such letter.”

Harold sighed, but he knew there was no arguing with his mother. He grudgingly produced the writing exercises Miss Mason imposed on them, but most of his math and reading homework he could do on the spot without the need for preparation. Even so, shortly afterwards Miss Mason gave him another letter for his parents.

He sat on the bus home, turning it over in his hands. He wished there was a way of opening it secretly to see what was in it. He knew that you could steam open a letter and then close it again afterwards, so nobody could detect what you had done, but of course he couldn’t do that on the bus. He couldn’t get rid of the letter either. Miss Mason would find out if his parents never got it. He couldn’t come up with any solution, so he was forced to hand the letter over when he got home.

Fortunately it turned out that this letter wasn’t about something Harold had done or hadn’t done. It was just that Miss Mason had noticed how Harold had to squint to read her letter cards or the numbers on the blackboard, and she advised his parents to have his eyes examined.

Therefore next week, his parents drove into town with him and took him to the ophthalmologist. It turned out that Harold was nearsighted and needed glasses. Harold was fascinated by the ophthalmologist’s instruments and wished he could have spent some time figuring out how they worked. His parents, however, seemed to think that the visit had been some kind of ordeal for him to endure, and agreed to buy him a comic book as a reward. After some deliberation he chose Batman. That was his favorite superhero.

Not long afterwards they went into town again to pick up his glasses. As soon as he put them on, the benefits of having them became apparent to Harold. He could see everything more clearly than ever before. He had thought that it was natural that everything became blurry in the distance, but now he found that it wasn’t so. On the way home Harold looked out of the car windows on both sides and couldn’t get enough of it. He saw everything quite literally with new eyes. When he looked up, there was a buzzard circling high up in the sky. Without his glasses, Harold probably wouldn’t have spotted it at all, but now he could discern its wings, its tail, its whole shape. Who knew what other birds there were that had escaped his notice before!

***

When school started again on Monday, the drawbacks of wearing glasses became apparent to Harold equally quickly. For the other kids they were just another thing to mock him for, and “four-eyes” became their new favorite insult. That was highly unpleasant, but Harold was also worried about getting beaten up and breaking his glasses in the process. He knew they had been expensive, and he would surely be in trouble if he got them damaged. Avoiding the bullies was therefore more important than ever, but it was not easy. Harold tried to predict where they would go at what time, but often enough he got it wrong.

One day he was on his way to the lunch room, when he saw Burt and his friends coming towards him. He turned round, but it was too late. They had seen him and gave chase. Harold ran up the stairs, turned a corner and found himself in an area of the school where he had never been before. He could hear his pursuers on the stairs, so in desperation he slipped into the nearest room and closed the door behind him. He turned around, and his eyes grew wide. He was standing in a room full of books. Bookcases ran along the walls, and more bookcases stood in rows in the middle, leaving only narrow spaces between them. Harold had never seen so many books in one place. Why had nobody told him that this place existed? With so many books, he could find answers to all his questions. They was so much to learn, to find out, more adventures to go on. His tormentors were completely forgotten. He stretched out a hand and ran a finger along the spines. If only he could spend more time here than in the classroom! The place had an atmosphere of peace and tranquillity, but also of mystery, and of promise.

Harold started as a voice suddenly said: “Come here where I can see you!”

He picked his way through the thicket of bookshelves until he came to a little side-room, scarcely bigger than a closet. It only held a very small desk and a chair, and on this chair sat the man who had spoken. He had white hair and a white moustache, small wire-rimmed glasses and, like all the other male teachers, he wore a suit, but he had added his own flamboyant touches in the shape of a paisley bow tie and a burgundy vest which stretched over his belly. He held a teacup and saucer in his hand, and a teapot stood behind him on the desk.

The man cast an inquisitive glance at Harold and said: “I am Mr Klein. And who are you?”

“Harold,” said Harold.

“I haven’t seen you before. Who is your teacher?”

“Miss Mason,” Harold answered.

“So you’re in first grade? We don’t usually get first graders in here.”

Disappointment flashed through Harold. Were the gates of this paradise about to be slammed in his face as soon as he had discovered it?

“Are they not allowed?” he asked anxiously.

“The school library is for the use of all members of the school,” said Mr Klein. “That includes first graders. It’s just that we don’t really have anything for those who are only starting to learn to read.”

Harold was relieved. That didn’t sound like he was about to be shown the door.

“I can read,” he told Mr Klein.

“Well, then the library is at your service. It’s open during school hours, and you can come here and read. You can also borrow books and take them home with you, but you must show me the books first so I can sign them out.” He took a sip of his tea, put the cup down and turned back to Harold.

“So, what would you like to read?”

Harold looked back at the rows of books, his eyes wide, struggling to take it all in.

He took a deep breath and said: “Everything.”

Mr Klein laughed. “While such a thirst for knowledge is commendable, it is not very practical to read everything at once. May I make a suggestion? If you want to borrow a book right now, why not take a good story? I’m sure you will find something you like over there. And then you can think about what interests you most, and what you would like to know first. Does that sound like a good deal to you?”

Harold nodded, and moved to the shelf that Mr Klein had pointed out.

“If I’m not much mistaken, you have to be back in class in a few minutes,” Mr Klein called after him. “Make sure you bring your book to me before you leave!”

It was difficult to choose something so quickly, but Harold managed it and rushed back to Mr Klein’s office with “By the Shores of Silver Lake”. He had read “Little House on the Prairie” and “On the Banks of Plum Creek” at home – they were among his mother’s books from her childhood – and he had enjoyed them very much, so he was happy to find another volume in the series. He watched as Mr Klein noted his name and the title in a book, then he ran back to his classroom to arrive there just in time. He sat down and faced the blackboard, but he was paying even less attention to the lesson than usual. His mind was still in that room filled with books – with treasures, hundreds of them, just waiting for him to open them up.

With the discovery of the library, things were looking up for Harold. He could spend much of his lunch hour there, in safety, pursuing whatever interest consumed him at the moment. Mr Klein was very helpful in finding just the books that would answer his questions, or in recommending something that he thought Harold would enjoy. Harold started to feel quite at home there. He found the library’s atmosphere soothing, and the rows of books were a reassuring presence for him. It was usually very quiet, the only sounds being the rustle of pages being turned, the clinking of Mr Klein’s tea cup, and the occasional whispered conversation between other students. As soon as he opened a book, Harold could escape into another world and forget about his worries.

***

Harold was lying on his stomach in front of the window of the laundry room, re-reading his favorite comic books. Harold had his own bedroom, but this was his preferred place. The laundry room was so called because his mother did indeed use it to do the ironing, and the family’s bedlinen was stored in the cupboards. But really the room was used to store all kinds of things that were not used very often or not at all. There was a large old-fashioned sewing machine, which had belonged to Harold’s grandmother. It didn’t work anymore. Harold’s mother had a more modern machine, on which she made skirts and dresses for herself and shirts for Harold and his father. Harold had often poked and prodded the old machine with his fingers. He would have liked to take it apart, to find out what was wrong, maybe even fix it. He had gone so far as to loosen one or two screws at the back, but he was fairly sure that his mother would not appreciate it if he went any further.

The room was at the top of the house, with a ceiling that sloped on one side and a window that started at floor level and was exactly as high as Harold. Here Harold spent a lot of his time, lying in front of the window, reading. He made extensive use of the school library’s borrowing facilities. Harold had a voracious appetite for books, but there weren’t many in his home. His parents weren’t great readers – his father only read the paper, and his mother occasionally a magazine. On a shelf in the corner were a few books from his parents’ childhoods, and an encyclopedia with a couple of volumes missing (this is where he had read about the axolotl).

The weather was particularly bad this weekend. It had started with rain, which now turned into snow, the wet, slushy kind that wouldn’t last. It was the first snow of this year, and it was only just November. Harold wondered if they were going to get a very long winter, like Laura Ingalls and her family had experienced. That had been in Iowa, too.

He turned back to the comic book he was reading. Of all the superheroes, Batman was his favorite. He admired Batman the most, because unlike Superman or the Flash, Batman wasn’t helped in his heroics by some supernatural power or by being from another planet. Batman was in reality just a man: Bruce Wayne. Harold sometimes wished that he could be like Batman. Then those bullies at school would never be able to get the better of him. He would punish them, and he would be able to defend others, too, for Harold had noticed that he was not the only one at school who was picked on by bigger and stronger kids. But he couldn’t possibly be like Batman, could he?

And then it happened. It was right there, in front of the laundry room window, on a dull November afternoon, that Harold came up with The Plan.

If Bruce Wayne was just a man, without any special powers, didn’t this mean that other people _could_ be just like him? For what was it that enabled Batman to be the crimefighter he was? First of all, he was very smart. He knew just about everything there was to know, or at least how to find things out. He also had technology. He had the Batmobile, and the Batcave full of gadgets, and a big computer. But these only helped him because he knew how they worked. He had built most of them himself. Harold, too, was keen on knowledge and eager to find out how things worked. Now that he had a whole library at his disposal, learning all kinds of things was certainly not impossible. Of course, he realized, all this technology and everything else that Batman had must have cost a lot of money. Easy enough for Bruce Wayne, since he was a millionaire. But millionaires existed in real life, didn’t they? There was nothing to stop Harold from becoming one himself. Suddenly a whole new world of possibilities opened up before Harold. With a shiver of excitement he realized that yes, it was actually possible to be like Batman. But it wouldn’t happen overnight. It would take time and effort – he would have to do a lot of reading and learning. If he started today, right now, no time would be wasted. But then it occurred to Harold that every day he wasted hours of precious time sitting in the classroom, where knowledge did not seem to be very welcome.

Harold sighed and turned the page of his comic book. It seemed that The Plan could only succeed if nobody knew what he was doing. Just like Bruce Wayne, who could only do what he did because nobody knew that he was Batman. Wait – that was it! What he needed was a secret identity. And with a sudden surge of inspiration The Plan really took shape in Harold’s head.

From now on, there would be two Harolds – a visible, public Harold, who sat in the classroom, answered the teacher’s questions and did his pointless homework, and a secret Harold, who would gather all the knowledge he could, observe the world unnoticed, figure out how it worked and thereby slowly gain the power to change it. If Public Harold could attract as little attention as possible, Secret Harold could get on with his mission of becoming all-knowing. There had to be ways of making use even of those pointless school hours - he would just have to figure out exactly how. It would take a lot of work, because it was not just a matter of reading a lot. It was also important to observe things and people, what they did and why they did it, to uncover what was beneath the surface. “Knowledge is Power”: Harold had read those words once on a bookmark stuck into one of his mother’s books. Because that was what Harold was really aiming for – not just knowledge about the world and everything in it, but the power to change it. It was plain that the world could be a much better place than it was, he only had to look at his school to realize that. And what else did superheroes do than make the world a better place? Harold was ever more firm in his resolve. From today he, too, would be a superhero.

***

Over the next few weeks Harold worked on putting The Plan into practice. When sitting in the classroom, he tried to divide his attention between whatever it was that Miss Mason wanted them to do, and a book he had hidden underneath the latest instalment in the adventures of Dick and Jane. Luckily, most of the lessons followed a more or less predictable pattern. Miss Mason almost always called on her pupils in the order in which they were sitting. So if the task was to read out loud or to present the solution to a math problem, it was pretty easy for Harold to figure out at which sentence or which problem it would be his turn. All he had to do was mark the place in advance, listen with half an ear for his name to be called, give the answer and return to his hidden book. It wasn’t as easy as he had imagined, but he kept practising and soon only blundered occasionally. The success of The Plan was contingent on Harold staying out of trouble, and by and large he managed it. It was only once that he really got into trouble – double trouble in fact. It was towards the end of the year, when Miss Mason had started to introduce her class to cursive writing and lessons in penmanship with a fountain pen. Harold had not been able to contain his curiosity and had taken his pen apart to find out how it worked. First he got into trouble with Miss Mason because of the ink he had spilled over his desk, and again with his mother when he got home, because of the ink he had spilled over his shirt. But while that was his biggest mistake, nobody noticed what he was really doing.

One evening Harold was in bed, supposedly asleep but in reality engrossed in “The Jungle Books”. While he greatly enjoyed books about science and nature and everything factual, he also loved stories. They were his escape, his consolation when the world wasn’t treating him too well. But suddenly it occurred to him that maybe they didn’t fit in with The Plan. The Plan was to absorb as much knowledge as possible, so wasn’t he wasting his time with stories like this? Harold was torn. He was committed to The Plan, but he didn’t want to give up the pleasure of reading stories. They were what made life bearable for him. So what was he supposed to do?

The next day he put the question to Mr Klein, in general terms and without mentioning The Plan, of course.

“Ah,” said Mr Klein, “an interesting question. It is a surprisingly common misconception that one can’t learn anything from reading fiction. You want to learn everything about the world, yes? Well, you have probably noticed that the world is full of people. So if you want to know the world, you have to get to know people. And your stories are all about people – they will teach you what they do, what they feel, what they are like. They portrait the vast variety of people’s characters, good people, bad people, all kinds of people. Keep reading, Harold – any sort of book will make your mind grow.”

And so Harold kept reading, and he kept observing what was going on around him. He knew it wasn’t enough to absorb knowledge just from books – a good detective like Batman would keep track of his environment, record people’s actions and try to discern patterns. In a way it worked out to his advantage that he was always on the sidelines instead of participating in his classmates’ activities. He just sat there quietly – at least as long as Burt and his friends didn’t bother him – but his eyes were everywhere.

***

Strangely enough, when his first opportunity for being a hero came, he didn’t even realize that he had properly started to put the world to rights until afterwards. It all started when Mary came to school with a handful of marbles her aunt had given her. Mary was the first grade’s undisputed marble champion, and these new marbles were particularly beautiful, with an iridescent sheen to them, like the plumage on a mallard’s neck. She showed them to the others, who admired them with oohs and aahs, then she put them into her pocket and sat down as the lesson began. During recess everybody went outside. Harold sat and watched Mary and her friends as they played with a long skipping rope, taking turns either skipping or turning the rope. When it was Mary’s turn to skip, she took off her coat, left it on the ground and joined her friends. Nobody noticed when Burt came sauntering along, quickly bent down, took Mary’s marbles and put them into his own pocket. Nobody, that is, except Harold. But Harold was helpless to prevent the theft. He was too far away to intervene. And anyway, he couldn’t have confronted Burt without getting beaten up and risking being hurt and breaking his glasses. He couldn’t tell the teacher either – Burt would surely take it out on him afterwards. So what could he do? He had a sinking feeling in his stomach. He knew it was up to him to do something, but he couldn’t think what. He kept a close eye on Burt, though, and saw him put his coat with the marbles in the pocket in his locker before lessons started again. While sitting in class not listening to Miss Mason, Harold tried to think how he could make use of what he had observed. And slowly, the solution came to him. For there something else Harold had observed, and now this knowledge could give him the advantage he needed. Yesterday, he had watched as Burt, in a fit of rage, had kicked against his locker so hard that the door no longer closed properly. It hadn’t been repaired yet, and while one could make a show of locking it, the latch no longer caught as firmly as it should. It could probably be pushed up easily with a pencil or something similar. Harold carefully hatched his plan, and by lunchtime he knew what to do. He did not go to the library, but first went outside to make sure that Burt and his friends were occupied with their ballgame as they usually were. Then he quickly ran to the front of the school and grabbed a handful of pebbles from one of the large concrete planters. Armed with that, he made his way inside again and approached the lockers. He looked carefully round to see who was close by. It didn’t matter if someone saw him, he reasoned, as long as it wasn’t someone who knew which locker was whose. Anyone who saw him open the door would just assume that he was getting something from his own locker. Harold quickly inserted his pencil into the gap where the door was bent and pushed. It worked as he had anticipated, and with a snap and a clang, the door sprang open. He searched the pockets of Burt’s coat as fast as he could, found the marbles, took them out, replaced them with the pebbles and closed the door again. He put the marbles into his own pocket and quickly moved away. Lunchtime wasn’t over yet, so Harold did go to the library after all. He went to the quietest corner he could find and sat down between two bays of shelves. Suddenly his knees felt all weak, and his heart was beating fast. Curious – while he was actually breaking into someone else’s locker and taking something that wasn’t his, he had been totally calm and focused on the task at hand. It was only now that it dawned on him what he had actually done. If anyone found out, he would be in big trouble. Much bigger trouble that he had ever been in before. And not just from Burt, but from everybody else – from Mary, from Miss Mason, from his parents, and possibly even from Mr Klein. He didn’t think that anybody would believe the truth if he told them. He was shaking with fear now, but he knew there was no turning back. He had to follow through to the end, and to do that he had to appear as normal as possible. He took a few deep breaths, and slowly the calming atmosphere of the library worked on him. By the end of lunchtime he was able to go back to his classroom without anyone noticing anything wrong.

He now had one more thing to do: to give the marbles back to Mary without anybody’s knowledge. His opportunity came during afternoon recess: Mary, who so far hadn’t even noticed that her marbles were missing, put her coat on the ground again to join her friends in another round of skipping. Harold chose the right moment, quickly went to her coat, bent down and shoved the marbles back into her pocket. Then he ran to the other side of the schoolyard, as far away from his classmates as possible.

He went home that afternoon without having seen what happened when Burt realized that all he had in his pocket were pebbles. But just to imagine his face was very satisfying.

It didn’t occur to Harold at first that this had been his first deed as a superhero. He hadn’t felt very heroic. Surely Batman would have gone up to Burt straight away, shaken him until he dropped the stolen marbles, and then given him a punch for good measure. Batman would never have hidden in the library, shaking with fear.  But Harold wasn’t like Batman, not yet anyway, and he had to do things his own way. He felt nonetheless that he had done the right thing. And maybe that was what counted – what you did, and not how you did it. Harold had seen something wrong, and he had found a way to put it right. It had been frightening, but it also felt good. He would do it again in a similar situation, he was sure. All the way home Harold could feel that mixture of fear and excitement in his stomach. Today his future had truly begun.

***

Miss Mason sat in front of her class and surveyed her pupils. It was shortly before Christmas, and the kids were busy making Christmas cards. Miss Mason thought that by now she knew each and every one of them fairly well. She always prided herself in her ability to accurately judge the children’s characters and was confident that she could make some prediction about their future. She did not rush to judgement, but by the time the schoolyear was advanced this far, she knew what her pupils were like.

Susan, for example, was the brightest kid in the class. She excelled in all subjects, but she was also popular and had many friends. It was easy to see her as a future A-student and a leader among her peers.

Carter was quite a naughty boy and he could be disruptive, but Miss Mason put that down to his exuberant energy. He was no bully, and if his energy could be channelled into his learning, he would do well.

Burt on the other hand was truly malicious, and Miss Mason had recognized him as a hopeless case. He was older than everyone else, but was either unwilling or unable (or both) to learn anything. Miss Mason had had cases like his before – they invariably turned out to be drop-outs and descended into a life of unemployment and maybe even crime.

Behind Burt sat Harold, at the moment apparently engaged in cutting something very small out of his colored paper. It had taken Miss Mason surprisingly long to figure out Harold. He was small for his age, but that was not unusual – almost every class had one child who was smaller than the others. But Miss Mason had wondered at first if Harold was lagging behind in other aspects of his development as well. It had been very difficult to get him to pay attention, and he hadn’t been doing his homework. He wasn’t disruptive, in fact he never spoke unless prompted. But Miss Mason had wondered if maybe he found it difficult to keep up with the rest of the class. Lately, though, he rarely forgot his homework, and the answers he gave in class were always correct. Miss Mason now thought that he was one of those kids who find the transition from the freedom of early childhood to the more serious world of school difficult. He just wasn’t used to regular work and discipline, and so, being quiet by nature, he hadn’t disturbed the lessons but had simply tuned out. His impaired eyesight had probably been a contributing factor. Since she had written the letter to his parents, however, things had improved. He was probably more strictly supervised at home now, and his mother made sure that he did his homework. Miss Mason had seen lots of kids like that before – not bright but able to keep up with the class if they applied themselves. If Harold could be kept at his work, he would do well enough. He would probably be able to graduate high school and get some sort of white collar job. Satisfied with her projection of Harold’s future, Miss Mason got up and walked around between the desks to see what her pupils were doing. When she reached Harold’s desk, he looked up from what he was doing. Sometimes, in moments like this, Miss Mason felt a nagging doubt if she had actually gauged Harold’s character correctly. Normally kids’ emotions showed very clearly on their faces – they were not old enough to hide anything. But Harold looked at her now with a completely neutral expression. How could a six-year old child look so inscrutable? With a slight discomfort, she said: “That’s very nice, Harold,” and moved on.

Harold had cut a Christmas tree out of green paper and pasted it onto his card. Now he was trying to cut out tiny birds to sit on the branches. He struggled with the big blunt scissors that he’d been given for his task. At home he could have borrowed the small scissors from his mother’s sewing basket. But the school evidently didn’t trust the kids with anything sharp and pointy. Suddenly he became aware that Miss Mason was standing in front of his desk. He looked up, and she said to him: “That’s very nice, Harold.” He nodded and watched her move away. When she was no longer looking at him, he allowed himself a little self-satisfied smile.

“If only you knew,” he thought. “But you have no idea who I really am.”


End file.
